]]>https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/dare-straction-call-hogs/feed/0croziermartinKepwies Like Watermelon: The Busts Keep Getting Bigger: Why?https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/kepwies-like-watermelons-the-busts-keep-getting-bigger-why/
https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/kepwies-like-watermelons-the-busts-keep-getting-bigger-why/#respondTue, 19 Jul 2011 16:10:10 +0000http://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/?p=80Continue reading →]]>In the June 14th New York Review of Books Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics & International Affairs at Princeton, and Robin Wells Krugman, former Professor of Economics at Princeton, place the return to avaricious profit in Wall St. in the context of a history of repeated Government Bailouts.

There is a repeated pattern – Financial Institutions over-reach, creating new instruments they don’t understand the risks of, ignore warnings as to such, rely on government help (aid and guarantees, placing tax-payers money at risk) and then once out of the woods ‘they went right back to denouncing big government and resumed the very practices that created the crisis‘

1991’s junk-bond collapse due to the consequences of vast loan-financed overbuilding of commercial real estate in the 1980s (again Citibank) which require Federal insurance to avert a crisis.

1982-1983 Latin American Debit Crisis (similar to the Greek EMU debacle of today) where banks, (again Citibank) were bailed out by huge US Govt. loans to foreign governments (bailing out the banks who they had debits with).

1970’s Penn Central bankruptcy‘s impact on its lenders (again the nascent Citibank, then called First National City) requiring emergency lending from the Federal Reserve to avert bankruptcy.

So much for the ‘once in 100 year economic flood’.. The financial crash was.. ‘in fact, just the most recent installment in a recurrent pattern of financial overreach, taxpayer bailout and subsequent Wall St. ingratitude. And All indications are that the pattern is set to continue.’.

Madricks ‘Age of Greed’ is a ‘frustrating’ series of fascinating and disturbing vignettes which suggests not only a repeated cycle but that the busts keep getting bigger. The primary thing to understand is that ‘it was not always thus..the US emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated financial sector, and for about 40 years those regulations were enough to keep banking both safe and boring.’ The Age of Greed shows how, in the 70s and 80s this regulation unraveled.

The book emphasises how Nixon & Ford blamed economic problems on ‘big government’ rather than the actual ‘economic shocks’ – the OPEC crisis & Crop failures along with wage-price indexation. Republican Shtick and treasury / Fed ‘flip-flops’ (such as wage-price controls) under Nixon-Ford-Carter led to the public losing faith in Government.. ‘creating within it a ready acceptance of the anti-government message of Friedman and Reagan’. As Madrick describes ‘Reagan’s enormous capacity for doublethink and convenient untruths enabled him, the front man for business interests, to convince a credulous public that ‘government had become the principal obstacle to their personal fulfillment’. The ‘Great Moralizer’ made unchecked greed and runaway individualism not only acceptable but lauded in the American psyche. Krugman & Wells commend Madrick’s analysis as show how partial ,flawed and ‘at odds with the data’ Friedman’s economics were.

1970s inflation undermined confidence in govt economic management, catapulted Friedman to fame and undermined the New Deal constraints on financial institutions by making it impossible to maintain limits on interest rates on customer deposits. Madrick tells this section by the story of Walter Wriston – head of First National City/Citibank from the 60’s to the 80’s and author of the famed quote (on sovereign debit) ‘Countries don’t go out of business‘.

Madrick marks Wriston as the epitome of the transformation of banking from cautious supporter of industry to free-wheeling independent profit centre, creator of crises and recurrent recipient of taxpayer bailouts. He opposed Govt. bailouts to industry (Chrysler (1978)) and opponents (Continental Illinois (1984)) while being in receipt of the very same to save his own company many times. First National’s issue of Certificate of Deposits (CDs) in 1961 was the first major crack in the New Deal’s bank regulation system. It side-stepped legal limits on interest rates. This use of ‘financial instruments’ has led to their constant use to avoid any regulations and constantly pile risks higher. In his time in control Wriston oversaw the Emerging Markets crash – a crash he had predicted would never happen.

‘When loads to Latin American Govt..s went bad, Citi and other banks were rescued via a program that was billed as aid to troubled debtor nations but was in fact largely aimed at helping US & European banks. In that sense the program for Latin America in the 1980s bore a strong family resemblance to what is happening to Europe’s peripheral economies now. Large official loans were provided to debtor nations, not to help them recover economically but to help them repay their private-sector creditors…But the loans came with a price, namely harsh austerity programs imposed on debtor nations – and in Latin America, the price of this austerity was a lost decade of falling incomes and minimal growth.’

Krugman & Wells notes that the political response to all these crisis has been ‘to shower more favours on the financial industry, dismantling what was left of Depression-era regulation’ and creating the ‘anything goes’ deregulated world of the 1990s onwards. This environment has already provided two huge bubbles – the tech bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s. Madrick charts this period with profiles of men who have become increasing famed in the sub-prime era ‘ Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide Financial Services), Jimmy Caine (Bear Stearns) Dick Flud (Lehman Bros) Stan O’Neil (Merrill Lynch) and Chick Prince (Citigroup) as well as the man recreating the Friedman role with his ‘entirely undeserved reputation’ as economic guru Alan Greenspan.

Krugman and Wells point to Sanford I. (Sandy) Weill – who masterminded the merger of Citibank and Travelers / Smith Barney to create Citigroup and then became its CEO. They note ‘what is truly remarkable about that merger is that when Weill proposed it, it was clearly illegal. Smith Barney, a Travellers sub. was engaged in investment banking – that is putting together financial deals. And New Deal-era legislation – the Glass Stegal Act – prohibited such activities on the part of commercial banks (deposit-taking institutions) like Citibank. But Weill believed he could get the law changed to retroactively approve the merger, and he was right….Weill ended his reign at Citigroup immensely rich but under an ethical cloud.‘

Why have these people been able to repeatedly act this way? Lack of Regulation and political contrivance, from both Republicans and Democrats, are the clear answers. ‘Undoubtably the most outrageous act – and the most economically damaging to the country – was Greenspan’s refusal to use regulatory powers at his disposal to rein in the exploding sub-prime market, despite being warned repeatedly that a catastrophe was brewing.‘

The authors note Madrick doesn’t deal with why regulators have abdicated responsibility, his book is more a catalogue of Greed. Krugman and Well’s reaffirm their previously presented belief that ‘white backlash’ against the Civil Rights movements transformed US politics and created the opportunity for a major push to undermine the New Deal. This combined with the metastasization of the influence of money in politics in the TV era has made deregulation the dominant meme.

Madrick’s subtitle ‘the triumph of Wall St. and the Decline of America’ is apt. Despite what business school academics claim the vast sums of Wall St. money did not improve America’s productive capacity ‘by efficiently allocating capital to its best use’.. Instead ‘it diminished the country’s productivity by directing capital on the basis of financial chicanery, outrageous compensation packages and bubble-infected stock price valuations.’ The USA ‘is ‘on track to spending the better part of a decade experiencing high unemployment, and sub-par growth blighting millions of lives – particularly the old, the young and the economically vulnerable.‘ The Democrats favour light regulatory reform, inefficient to tackle the problem and ethos of Wall St. and the Republican’s remain wielded to Reagan and Friedman: still blaming ‘big government’. ‘While proclaiming themselves defenders of the little guy, Republicans are currently hard at work undermining the Obama administrations consumer protections that would largely prevent a replay of the rapacious subprime lending.’

Madrick’s book is ‘a much-needed reminder of just how we got into the mess we’re in – a reminder that is greatly needed when we are still being told that greed is good‘.

1930 American Speech – (passenger pigeons) disappeared here about the middle seventies, and this word died out with them…. The pigeons fed in large flocks.. When feeding.. a flock would have from one to several old cock-pigeons posed on tall dead pines near by, watching. These birds kept up a constant calling, known from the sound as ‘cohootering’ and the sentinels were called ‘cohooters’.

2. n. A busy voluble leader in community affairs

1930 American Speech – Fifty years ago in the central part of Maine, a person who made himself prominent in local matters was commonly spoken of as a ‘cohooter’. ‘Down to the Methodis’ old Deacon Blank is the head-co-hooter’ but the term was oftenest used of men, and of men who talked more than they worked, in my recollection. The word had nothing to do with the phrase ‘to be in cahoots with’. There was nothing derogatory about it save the whimsical implications that the person mentioned was both seen and heard.. it was about equivalent to the ‘bell-wether of the flock’. The people, on Penobscot.. applied the name to their neighbours who made more noise than they did work, and particular to those who in the prayer-meetings were constant exhorters.

]]>https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/dare-straction-cohooter/feed/0croziermartinDrugs? Bust. The Epidemic of Mental Illness & The Illusion of Psychiatryhttps://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/drugs-bust-the-epidemic-of-mental-illness-the-illusion-of-psychiatry/
https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/drugs-bust-the-epidemic-of-mental-illness-the-illusion-of-psychiatry/#respondMon, 04 Jul 2011 23:50:39 +0000http://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/?p=52Continue reading →]]>Over two editions of the NYRB, Harvard’s Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, examines the ‘epidemic of Mental Illness’ in modern America as well as ruminating on the implications of the next edition of DSM, the industry bible at the heart of the prescription culture.

1987 – 2007 saw the numbers qualifying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increase nearly 2.5 times (1/184 in 1987 to 1/76 by 2007). In children the rate of increase was even more rapid: 35 times greater. Mental Illness is now the leading cause of disability in children, well ahead of physical disabilities..for which the Federal Programs were created.

Treatment of mental illness is nearly always by psychoactive drugs. Most psychiatrists treat only with drugs, referring patients to psychologists or social workers if they believe psychotherapy is also needed. The shift from ‘talk’ to ‘drugs’ mirrors the shift to belief that mental illness is the result of chemical imbalance. A theory rooted in the marketing of Prozac in 1987. In the following decade the number of people treated for depression tripled. (A)bout 10 percent of Americans over age six now take antidepressants. Antipsychotics are now the top-selling class of drug in the USA.

Kirsch, Whitaker & Carlat agree ‘on the disturbing extent to which the companies that sell psychoactive drugs…have come to determine what constitutes a mental illness and how the disorders should be diagnosed and treated’. They also all dispute that mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Between 1954 & ’57 three drugs were launched to treat the then ‘three major categories of mental illness’ – psychosis (Thorzine / chlorpromazine), anxiety (miltown / meprobamate) and depression (iproniazid)… ‘and the face of psychiatry was totally transformed’. Initially developed to treat physical disorders each drug was found to calm (for psychosis and anxiety) or lift (for depression) mental states as a side effect. Research showed these, and their successors, were affecting the level of chemicals in the brain and the neurotransmitter levels (the alteration of which can be detected by analysis of spinal fluid) which are known to allow communication within the brain. From this a causal link was established:

This instead of developing a drug to treat an abnormality, an abnormality was postulated to fit a drug.… it was entirely possible that drugs that affected neurotransmitter levels could relieve symptoms even if neurotransmitters had nothing to do with the illness in the first place. Carlat puts it starkly – if pain relief was treated the same way then Opium would be mass prescribed since narcotic pain medications activate opiate receptors in the brain… and we would believe that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.

However more damming is the fact that 50 years of seeking to prove the chemical basis of mental disorder has produced nothing to substantiate it. Neurotransmitter function seems to be normal in people with mental illness before any treatment… there is no chemical ‘imbalance’ until you start taking medication.

That there is no science to prove the basis for medicating is of interest but less point if the drugs actually work. Kirsch’s book seeks to ask that very question for antidepressants. His 15 year study at Hull University started by examining 38 published clinical trials. These showed that placebo’s were 3 times more effective in treating depression than no treatment at all. However antidepressants were only 4 times more effective. Placebos were 75% as effective as antidepressants. Kirsch then looked at unpublished trial records of the FDA.

To gain FDA approval for a drug all clinical trials must be submitted. If two of these trials show a drug to be more effective than a placebo then, generally, a drug will be approved. The number of failed trials is irrelevant and unpublished and classified as confidential proprietary information. Kirsch used Freedom of Information legislation to attain the unpublished trials for the six most widely used antidepressants (between 1987 and ’99) – Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone & Effexor. In total there were 42 trials. The majority were negative – they failed to show the drug more effective than a placebo. Overall placebos were 82% as effective as the drugs. On the Hamilton Depression Scale (a score of the symptoms of depression widely used by the profession) the average difference between the drug and the placebo was 1.8 points ‘ a difference that, while statistically significant, was clinically meaningless. All drugs were equally unimpressive in their effectiveness..yet because the positive tests were widely publicised the public and medical profession came to believe the drugs highly effective’.

In addition Kirsch found other drugs not considered antidepressants (synthetic thyroid hormone, opiates, sedatives, stimulates and some herbal remedies) as effective as antidepressants. The ‘chemical’ impact – serotonin levels – was irrelevant to effectiveness.

A placebo was 75-82% as effective; another drug – one with side effects that a placebo lacks – was as effective as the prescribed medication. This matched with the accepted feeling that antidepressants were more effective for severe depression cases – severe cases are given heavier antidepressants and thus the side-effects are more pronounced. Tests using ‘active’ placebos (ones producing side effects) bore this out – there was no difference in effectiveness between the antidepressant and the active placebo. Kirsch is a faithful proponent of the scientific method, and his voice therefore brings a welcome objectivity to a subject often swayed by anecdotes, emotions or self-interest.

Depression and schizophrenia has changed. Before they were episodic and self-limited – characterised by long periods of normalcy between bouts. Now they are chronic and lifelong and Whittaker purports this as due to the long-term effects of the drugs prescribed to treat them. As a journalist rather than scientist his work is less rigorous than Kirsch’s but cites some important relevant authorities – Steve Hyman supports his assertion that long-term use of psychoactive drugs causes ‘substantial and long-lasting alterations in neural function’. These effects, the side-effects of the drugs and of the drugs needed to treat the side-effects result in daily cocktails of medication and increase the difficulty of getting off medication. Removal of medication often doesn’t ‘restore’ the pre-existing ‘balance’ of the brain but rather leaves it unable to compensate for the sudden lack or surfeit of the ‘treated’ chemical. Whitaker is furious at this iatrogenic epidemic as well as at the huge impact that the medications side-effects, physical and mental, have had on the population.

Before drugs were introduced the profession had little interest in neurotransmitters or any other aspect of the physical brain. Prior to the mid-50s drug ‘revolution’ Freudian conflict was seen as the source of mental illness – this was illness of ‘the mind’ rather than ‘the brain’. From the 50s to the 80s psychiatrists became psycho-pharmacologists – concerned less with life-story and more with reducing symptoms of ‘chemical imbalance’. As early as the ‘70s an anti-psychiatry movement took root, alarmed by the side-effects and the profession was in competition for resources from social workers. In addition there remained firm adherents to the Freudian / mind tradition. The result was the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) ‘vigorous effort to remedicalize psychiatry’ (Melvin Sabshin, Medical Director APA) via the MD’s weapon of choice – the prescription script. By fully embracing the biological model of mental illness and the use of psychoactive drugs to treat it, psychiatry was able to relegate other mental health care providers to ancillary positions and also able to identify itself as a scientific discipline’. The pharmaceutical industry soon made its gratitude tangible.

The device to enforce the biological model was the DSM – the book providing the diagnostic criteria for all mental disorders. The first two editions of the book (1952, 1968) were Freudian endeavours. DSM-III was pure ‘chemistry’. Published in 1980 it contained 265 diagnoses (83 more than DSM II) and was deliberately marketed not only to the medical profession but insurers, judges, lawyers, companies, hospitals, prisons, govt. agencies and any bodies concerned with citizens well-being. Consistency of diagnosis (reliability) was the key and matching diagnosis to drug the goal –see 2010 speech by APA president Carol Bernstein. Reliability is NOT the same as validity. The problem of the DSM is that in all of its editions it has simply reflected the opinions of its writers. DSM-III has been heavily criticised as being the opinions of the then President of the APA, Robert Spitzer, who staffed its ‘research team’ with people he viewed as yes men. He would later brag ‘I could just get my way by sweet talking and whatnot’. By 1984 George Vailant, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, claimed DSM-III no more than ‘a bold series of choices based on guess, taste, prejudice and hope’.

DSM-III had no citations of scientific studies to support its decisions; the most recent edition has ‘source-books’ – presenting rationales and limited references. It remains far from being a scientific work referenced with evidence. It may be of much interest for a group of experts to get together and offer their opinions but unless these opinions can be buttressed by evidence they do not warrant the extraordinary deference shown to DSM.

DSM-III’s 265 diagnoses had grown to 365 by the time DSM-IV (TR) was published in 2000. Each new edition has produced a larger more expensive volume to be purchased by all the industries with an interest in the mental health machine. With over 1,000,000 sales its revenue is a major funding source for the APA. And membership of the editorial team has proved lucrative to members of a psychiatric profession already well-financed by pharmaceutical companies. 1/5th of APA funding comes from drug companies and Minnesota & Vermont’s ‘sunshine’ transparency laws have revealed that drug companies pay more money to psychiatrists than any other specialty field. Contributors to the DSM are seen as Key Opinion Leaders for the pharmaceutical industry – of the 170 who worked on DSM-IV-TR, 95 had financial ties to drug companies, including every contributor to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia. 56% of the APA members composing the work-groups for the forthcoming DSM-V ‘disclosed significant industry interests’.

Carlat is clear as to why his profession receives so much money from the pharmaceutical industry ‘our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another’. There are no objective signs or tests for mental illness – no lab data or MRI findings – the boundaries from normal and abnormal are unclear – leaving it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries and create new diagnoses that would be impossible in a field like cardiology.

Drug companies don’t limit themselves to funding psychiatrists. The fund patient advocacy groups and educational organisations. In 3 months of 2009 one company, Eli Lilly, gave over $1.2 million to 4 advocacy / patient support groups. These groups influence insurers to cover products and products ensure psychiatrists see more patients per hour than they would if they had to deal it ‘talk’. Carlat believes ‘scripts’ allow him an income of $180 per hour – he estimates he would be under the $100 per hour if he indulged in ‘talk’ therapy. The quick matching of symptoms to disorders leaves most patients with multiple mental health ‘problems’ and multiple prescription medications to treat them (typically Celexa for depression with Ativan for anxiety and Ambien for insomnia and Provigil to combat the fatigue brought on by Celexa and Viagra for the other main side-effect.). In addition he states that within the categories of mental health disorders there is very little difference between the panoply of drugs. ‘To a remarkable degree, our choice of medications is subjective, even random. Perhaps your psychiatrist is in a Lexapro mood this morning, because he was just visited by an attractive Lexapro drug rep’

Work on DSM-V is ongoing and it is clear that DSM-IV-TR’s 365 diagnoses will be expanded on yet again. Even the chair of DSM-IV, Allen Frances, is highly critical of this, claiming it will be a ‘bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry but at a huge cost to the new false positive patients caught in the excessively wide DSM-V net’ (Psychiatric Times, 06/26/09). Certainly the net is going to be cast wide – Kupfer and Reiger, who lead the DSM-V project, made clear they viewed 30-50% of all patients presenting themselves for any primary health care to be displaying ‘prominent mental health symptoms or identifiable mental disorders’. It looks as though it will be harder and harder to be normal.

Of even greater concern is the rise in diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in children as young as two years old. Juvenile bipolar disorder prevalence jumped forty-four fold in 11 years (’93-’04) while autism went from 1/500 to 1/90 over the same period. 10% of US 10yo boys now take daily stimulants for ADHD and 500,000 US kids take antipsychotic drugs. These diagnoses also go through ‘trends’ – ADHD’s pervasiveness was limited in time by the suggestion that many ADHD diagnoses were actually bipolar disorder and that it could be treated at infancy, leading to the rise of juvenile bipolar disorder which in turn has been ‘replaced’ by the ‘new monster’ of TDD (temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria) which is scheduled to appear in DSM-V.

Two additional problems, welfare-entitlement and off-label prescription, compound the issue of children and mental health medication. David Autor makes clear that a family’s child qualifying for mental health drugs becomes ‘the new welfare’ – the family will be entitled to SSI, more generous than standard welfare, and often Medicare. Hospitals and state welfare agencies have incentives to encourage uninsured families to apply for SSI payments since hospitals will get paid and states will save money by shifting welfare costs to the federal government. Rutgers University found that children from low-income families are four times more likely to receive the qualifying antipsychotic medicines than are privately insured children.

Rebecca Riley died aged 4 from an OD on Clonidine and Depakote which she was prescribed for ADHD and bipolar disorder from diagnoses she obtained when 2 years old. Clonidine was FDA approved for high blood pressure, Depakote for epilepsy and acute mania in bipolar disorder. She was also using Seroquel, approved for schizophrenia and acute mania. None was approved for ADHD or long-term use in treating bipolar disorder; none was approved for use in 4 year old children. Her siblings had similar diagnoses and were taking combination psychoactive drugs. Her family, save herself who was merely in the process of apply for such, were all in receipt of SSI. The family dispute accusations that they over-dosed their children.

It is illegal for companies to market drugs for anything other than their approved use. It is not illegal for physicians to prescribe drugs for anything other than their approved use. In the past four years five firms have admitted to federal charges of illegally marketing psychoactive drugs… despite having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle the charges, the companies have probably come out well ahead. Doctors could prescribe off-label so as to take advantage of new scientific evidence – that sensible caveat has become a marketing tool fit to be exploited by the highly subjective nature of psychiatric diagnosis.

Americans have come to believe that pills are more potent despite psychotherapy (talk) and exercise having been shown to be as effective as drugs for depression. Helping families in troubled economic circumstances should not be dealt with by diagnosing 2 year olds with ADHA and juvenile bipolar disorder – tutoring, after-school care and education would probably be less expensive… ‘but unfortunately there is no industry to push these alternatives’. Rebecca Riley’s father was found guilty of first degree murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her mother guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to a minimum of 15 years. Her brother and sister are in state care.

QUOTE: ‘I could just get my way by sweet talking and whatnot‘ – Robert Spitzer.

1944 Western Words, Adam: Choke-bore pants – a name given the flare hipped, tight-kneed riding breeches of the Easterner.

1958 Woods Words, McCulloch: Worn by dude in the woods, and much sneered at by loggers

1959 Gunbarrel, Martin: She wore Chokeboard trousers, with wrap-around leggings, but her high-heel kid pumps left a two-inch margin of silk stocking exposed

Mainly – West.

See Also – Chokebore – a shotgun barrel that narrows toward the the muzzle.

]]>https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/dare-straction-chokebore-britches/feed/0croziermartinShellac of North America: 1000 Hurts: Obama; his words and deeds.https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/shellac-of-north-america-1000-hurts-obama-his-words-and-deeds/
https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/shellac-of-north-america-1000-hurts-obama-his-words-and-deeds/#respondSun, 03 Jul 2011 15:23:24 +0000http://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/?p=38Continue reading →]]>In June 14th New York Review of Books David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale, considers the conundrum of Barack Obama’s Presidency so far, resulting in a shellacking as comprehensive as any delivered by the polls or the pundits.

Walter Bagehot divided government into two elements – The Dignified and The Efficient. The Dignified concerned itself with ceremony, majesty, foreign affairs and state occasions, be they happy or sad; The Efficient with making laws, striking bargains between factions and party business. ‘Barack Obama from the start of his presidency has exhibited an almost exclusive taste for the dignified.’ He is slow to react, be it the Gulf oil-spill, the Fukushima disaster, the management of legislation such as Health Reform and even personal insults such as the Birther long-form distraction. It also provides his opponents with swift victories in the court of public opinion – the Netanyahu entanglement is a prime example.

The spat between President Obama and Congress over the War Powers Act (1973) in regard of Libya shows the first sign of opposition to the aggrandizement of executive power begun by Pres. G.W.Bush. Obama’s response shows a ‘mixture of arrogance and disregard’ as well as highlighting the problems that arise from his propensity to be specific when he would be served to be vague. Libya was promised to be ‘days’ not ‘weeks’, it is now ‘months’.

Obama was in Brazil when he announced the military action against Libya – in keeping with his propensity to stay ‘away’ from Washington and present himself as a statesman above the ‘disagreeableness’ in Washington, in doing so he plays the ‘outsider’ card of Carter, Reagan, Clinton and G.W.Bush. Bush Snr knew he would never have been able to play that ‘role’.

While it was successful for Clinton and Regan it made Carter and G.W.Bush seem incompetent and disengaged. The latter seems increasing applicable to Obama. ‘He retains the wish to be seen as a man above party; and a more general distaste for politics is also involved.

But what is Barack Obama if not a politician? He seems to suggest organizer, pastor, principle, values-counsellor or ‘moderator’ of national concerns. He has shifted from tours of town halls to televised speeches – Tucson Memorial (Jan 12), State Department (May 19) saw him move from the ‘problem’ of antagonism in national debate to the problem of the middle east: Being President of the world has sometimes seemed a job more agreeable to Barrack Obama than being President of the US.
This taste from global travel, being outside the Beltway and grand address matches his preference for symbolic authority of grand utterances over actual authority of directed policy. Is speeches cast him as a ‘holder-forth’ and yet ‘it is never clear what follows for him from the fact that the world is listening’.

His grand rhetoric on the modern world also sits ill with his bouts of spasmodic engagement and his vagueness in defining a policy jars with his wish to embrace a challenge. The Arab spring has shown his universal rhetoric inapplicable to specific places such as Bahrain. However his Arab spring language shows his understanding of the American example of democracy as unique and the conception of the USA as ‘the most grown up country in the world’ and it has led him to several commands (Qaddafi must go; Egypt must begin (transition)) of dubious authority save that of belief in ‘the uniqueness of America’s example. He constantly endorses non-violence but regularly cites the American Revolution and the Civil war – both instances of the need for violence – as well as championing a violent rebellion. The point is worth making only because the contradictions – which seem to have passed into his thinking undetected – must have been instantly obvious to his Arab listeners’.

As well as ‘American Uniqueness’ he also espouses the rhetoric of ‘American generosity’ – his Nobel speech was an example of this and oddly mismatched to the event. His portrayal of WWII, Korea and Kosovo as America willingly bearing its burden to help the world recalls William Gladstone’s portrayal of the British Empire:

“The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity”

“The high office of bringing Europe into concert, and keeping Europe in concert, is an office specially pointed out for your country to perform. That happy condition, so long as we are believed to be disinterested in Europe, secures for us the noblest part that any Power was ever called up to play.”

Both suppose ‘a policy of national self-interest will prove identical with a policy of international nobility and self-sacrifice’. It also assumes the whole world wants ‘commercial democracy’ (as far as it adheres to US interests).

Obama’s style has made him vulnerable to his opponent – The State Dept. speech on Israeli being an example – his general terms coupled with specifics such as reference to the 1867 boarders (with the caveat of ‘swap deals’ around such geography) was met by Netanyahu’s immediate rebuke of the ’67 map (with no mention of the swap deals) despite it being the basis for US-Israeli-Palestinian discussions for years. The moderate Professor was in conflict with the immoderate street-brawler.

This altercation then aggregated over a series of public meetings – Obama’s further detailing of his policy to AIPAC 2011 Convention, Netanyahu’s repost to the same audience the next day and then, on the eve of Obama’s departure to speak to the Irish about the ‘O’bamas’ and ‘hope’, the skewering of he received by the rapturously received Netanyahu on Obama’s home court: Congress. Netanyahu ramped up his opposition to any of the Presidents subtleties and portrayed himself as the (all but) All American hero – his subtext was ‘we are the home of freedom and wisdom among the ancients, just as you Americans are among the moderns.’ His mix of ancient biblical language, American-Israeli machismo, laudatory salutations to the USA and personal tales of time spent in both lands received an impressive twenty-nine standing ovations. ‘(Obama) was utterly overmatched by Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. It is an unhappy fact of politics that victory goes to the pressure that will not let up. Netanyahu’s belief in his immoderate purpose is stronger than Obama’s belief in his moderate purpose’.

The position of a moderate who aspires to shake the world into a new shape presents a continuous contradiction. The moderate feels constrained not to say anything startling and not to do anything very fast. Obama is caught in this contradiction and keeps getting deeper in, like a man who sinks in quicksand both the more he struggles and the more he stays still.

1857 Spirit of the Times ‘I see a kinder pigeon-hole cut in the side of a house and over the hole, in big writin ‘Blind Tiger: 10C a sight’.. Says I to the feller inside ‘here’s your ten cents, walk out your wild-cat’ Stranger, instead of showin’ me a wild varmint without eyes, I’ll be dod-busted if he didn’t shove out a glass of whiskey. You see that ‘blind tiger’ was an arrangement to evade the law, which wont let em sell licker there except by the gallon’

see also – Blind Pig (illegally made whiskey) and Blind Pigger (Person who sells illegal whiskey)

]]>https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/dare-straction-blind-tiger/feed/0croziermartinCan’t Get There from Here: Globalization and (un)Employmenthttps://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/cant-get-there-from-here-globalization-and-unemployment/
https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/cant-get-there-from-here-globalization-and-unemployment/#respondFri, 24 Jun 2011 18:01:54 +0000http://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/?p=27Continue reading →]]>In the July 2011 edition of Foreign Affairs Nobel Prize Winning Economist and Ivy-league Professor Michael Spence sets out the grim statistics behind the inter-relation of US jobless figures and the WTO reforms to world trade.

Globalization has helped many countries to long periods of sustained growth – 13, inc. China, have see +7% growth for more than 25 years ‘a century-long process in which income levels in developing countries have been converging towards those in developed countries’. Until the last 1o years developed countries were still growing and so was employment in those countries. That has changed: ‘for the first time growth and employment are starting to diverge’. At the same time job opportunities are moving away from growth sectors (tradables) to those where there is not only less growth but no reason to assume any future growth. This exacerbates income inequality.

1990-2008 – US employment increase 122m – 149m. 98% of the 27m new jobs were in non-tradables (can’t be exported) – mainly government & healthcare (as well as retail, construction and hospitality) ‘Employment barely grew in the tradable sector of the US economy.. manufacturing, engineering and consulting. Estimate total growth over the 18 years was 2% of total jobs growth – @600,000 jobs. In the tradable sector the loss of low-end jobs (less skilled) has been compensated for by very-high end skills – meaning employment opportunities for the educated at the expense of the less educated. These workers have been absorbed by the non-tradable sector but the economic problems post-crash means this no-longer will happen. If the nontradable sector continues to lose its capacity to absorb labour, as it has in recent years, and the tradable sector does not become an employment engine, the US should brace itself for a long period of high unemployment’.

Jobs grew but we got poorer – how? The answer is the different value-added figures in the tradable and nontradable sectors. Value-added is the difference between the cost of the inputs and the price of the output. The value-added of all industries in an economy equates to a nations GDP. Value-added in both tradeable and nontradable sectors increased at a similar rate however when the employment growth of each sector is analysed the consequence for lower wages emerges.

TRADABLES: little employment growth means value-added grew much more than employment and so value added per employee shot up. Value-added per employee grew from $79,000 to $120,000 (52%).

The incomes of workers are closely related to the value-added per employee. Since it didn’t rise much in the nontradable sector nor did wages. With increasing value-added in the tradable sector – and those sectors tendency to move the lower value-added jobs to other countries – those employed in those sectors took higher wages. And since most new jobs were created in the nontradable part of the economy, in which wages grew little, the distribution of income in the US economy become more uneven.

This trend will be continued with ever more elements of the tradable jobs able to be completed overseas so more jobs will go from that sector and the very-high end employees will continue to see increasing value-added, increasing wages. Its more money for very few people. Whereas with the domestic tradable section not requiring workers they will flood the nontradable sector and further depress wages with oversupply.

This is NOT ”Market Failure’ its is a clear consequence of the global trading regime’s efficiencies, but it is a ’cause for concern’ causing distributional problems for the advanced economies. Nor is this a sole consequence of labour-saving from automation and IT. These last two factors have cut jobs in both tradables and nontradables so cannot be blamed from employment decline in one sector alone. Spence says that ‘blame’ on Multi-national corporations (MNC’s) is overstated – its correct they take low value-added jobs out of the domestic economy by moving production chains overseas but he balances this effect, without statistics, by saying this process creates the high-value added end of employment in the tradable sector and have helped growth and competitiveness. He conceeds that companies private interests (profit) and the public’s interest (employment) ‘do not align perfectly’ and that even if wages rise in developing countires it will be many decades before they stop having the impact on domestic jobs that they currently have. He doesn’t note that not only would developing countries wages rise but that domestic wages will fall and that any future meeting will not necessarily be at the zenith of current domestic remuneration levels.

Is there a solution? Spence is good on generalities but his optimism doesn’t convince. He readily states that manufacturing jobs must be retained by productivity-enhancing technology and ‘competitive wage levels’ – however what competitive wage levels are he doesn’t admit. International labour comparisons are tricky and the general assumption is that as the high-value added jobs get added to the developing countries resume then their own labour costs will rise. Looking for a direct comparison between two nations also neglects sectoral difference within those nations however for all these problems the wage differential is still stark. The US Dept. of Labor’s Statistics Bureau noted that a 2004 study put manufacturing labor costs in China at 3% of US costs. Its own recent statistics on comparative wages it noted the Philippines wage rates are 4% of US rates while a recent China News article shows that Chinese manufacturing wages haven’t yet reached the giddy highs of the Philippines. So Spence’s prescription for a ‘competitive’ wage level seems pretty grim in terms of the take-home dollar. Spence may counter he is talking about the remaining manufacturing jobs – abandoning sectors that companies like American Apparel gamely preserve a domestic presence in – but then he is also abandoning a pretence of an employment policy per se. The economy needs jobs for all, not just the preservation of niche manufacturing for the highly trained and skilled.

Spence does note that Germany has ‘managed to retain its advanced manufacturing activities in industrial machinery by removing rigidities in the labor market and making a conscious effort to privilege employment over rapid rises in income’ and wants the USA to do the same. He notes that, while desirable, it is unlikely that public-sector demand stimulus will be politically possible – he tries to provide ammunition for those willing to advocate it however by noting that without public-sector stimulus there will be no private-sector renewal as investment in the private sector relies on demand and there is no sign of demand in the US economy unless the Government kick starts it.

His proscriptive analysis can be seen as

1) making employment opportunities for all Americans, regardless of educational attainment, a fundamental goal.

2) increasing competitiveness and inclusiveness of the US economy (‘uncharted territory‘ – requiring correcting outcomes on the global market without doing too much damage to efficiency and openness (protectionism)).

3) Boost education as a societal good – reverse the lack of commitment to education in large areas of the US and among different cultural groups. This takes time and ‘moral leadership‘.

4) Invest in technology that will increase competitiveness in the tradable sector via public-private partnerships. Govt. investment in Sci-tech should have job creation as a goal, not a side-effect.

5) tax-structures should be reformed – cutting company tax and encouraging overseas-profits to be brought back into the economy.

Its a vague and somewhat depressingly naive list. Points 1 and 3 are hopes that clash with the culture of the post-Reagan years. As for Point 2; Spence has shown how competitiveness has been directly attained by the sacrifice of inclusiveness. His own work shows that the sector that didn’t ship out the jobs saw little growth and negligible wage increases. Tradables have seen high gains in value-added because, in part, only the high-value-added positions remain and they have made their gains by cutting the low-value jobs and shipping them out. The Value-Added per Employee is bound to have grown when the costly-labour-intensive part of the job has been taken off the balance-sheet. Competitiveness and inclusivness are antithetical while one is attained by the sacrifice of the other. Point 4 is hard to envisage in an economy where the private sector loathes the public-sector and has been taught to see it as a place to extract profits from, such as with Private Finance Initiative build projects. Decades of encouraging the wage-depressed worker to berate the public sector means support for ‘partnerships’ will be in short supply. Finally point 5 is the zero-sum game that all countries are now engaged in, its the tax-rush to the bottom that puts short-term one-upmanship over a sensible examination of the relationship between Trade Law and Taxation.
Spence is rightly concerned with income inequality in the USA, he cities the top 20% in the USA as earning 8 times what the bottom 20% earns. He compares that to Germany where the difference is a mere 4 times. Income inequality and unequal wealth accumulation are hotly contested fields however the work of Michael Norton of Harvard Business School shows clearly that not only are Americans mistaken as to how unequal their country has become but also that they would like it a lot less unequal. Spence’s analysis shows that unless something is done they are heading in the wrong direction and no correction seems to be coming.

Spence is a good man, a man who’s goals are admirable and whose analytical skills has been commended by the highest academic authorities. He’s right to trumpet an employment policy as vital to America’s future and to say that without it the pressure of dissatisfaction with the global trading regime will ignite in other less desirable ways. His endorsement of applying Paul Samuelson‘s quote that ‘every good cause is worth some inefficiency‘ to equity and social cohesion shouldn’t cause public scheisters to shriek ‘socialism’ but it doubtless will. Sadly with his vague prescriptions and unlikely aspirations of hope Michael Spence is a man on a down-bound train.

]]>https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/cant-get-there-from-here-globalization-and-unemployment/feed/0croziermartinLiving The Americian DreamThe Girl with the Arab Strap: The Moralist: Tim Parks on The Girl who kicked the Hornets Nesthttps://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-girl-with-the-arab-strap-the-moralist-tim-parks-on-the-girl-who-kicked-the-hornets-nest/
https://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-girl-with-the-arab-strap-the-moralist-tim-parks-on-the-girl-who-kicked-the-hornets-nest/#respondMon, 30 May 2011 16:38:56 +0000http://rrnyrb.wordpress.com/?p=14Continue reading →]]>Regular NYRB writer Tim Parks turns his attention to literary phenomenon of the late ‘noughties’ The Girl.. series and seems unimpressed by what he finds.

Parks begins by conveying the basic threads at the start of The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest – the arrival of Blomkvist, the numerological mystery and the strange deus ex of his daughter’s solution to said mystery. Parks notes that not only does the format of the numbers not adhere to any convention for biblical naming, thus making their casual recognition unlikely, but also wonders why a daughter who had so identified the passages would be so unconcerned about their violent misogynistic contents. In addition he note the lack of logic behind the internet-compulsive Blomkvist suddenly needing to go to a library to find a copy of the www-idely available The Bible. Parks notes ‘Larsson’s Trilogy has not achieved its spectacular success thanks to the author’s impeccable skills as a detective story writer or any scrupulous attention to psychological realism.’

Noting the biographical similarities between Blomkvist and Larsson, Parks moves on to consider the attraction of the series central character – Lisbeth Salnder, or the ‘punk’ prone to saying ‘you chaps’ and ‘gad around’. From the start the miniature heroine is marked as not merely sexual but overly so ‘ two piercings on her face and maybe in other places’. Blomkvist is automatically reduced to being a mere function of interest for describing the Girl with the voracious vagina. Naturally her sexuality, and concomitant abusive childhood, is matched by her ne plus ultra computer skills. She knows whats inside every computer before Windows has had time to load. The two characters roles now set Parks notes that the novels are really simply about sex – and how nasty, unromantic and disjuncted its modern practise is – rape, anal male rape,lesbianism, un-emotional granny sex, 3-sums and then work-place rutting between our central characters of decades age difference. Every last inch of flesh and torn clothing is detailed as the characters move along the near-superfluous mysteries to its increasingly irrelevant ending. Parks makes clear that ‘there is an element of the graphic novel in all this, a feeling that we have stepped out of any feasible realism into a cartoony fantasy of ugly wish fulfilment.’He notes no surprise when the sequels make prostitution rackets and S&M paedophile pornography the subjects of their narrative masquerade.

Seeking to find more to the series popularity than pulp pornography and unremarkable crime solving Parks plumps for the ethics, and violent effecting of, ‘retribution’ as the touchstone. He notes the books hardly deal with the drama of fear and courage typical of the genre, instead, as with the focus on good and bad sex, there is a division of the world into good and evil – rapists, abusers, Nazis, large organizations, anti-Semites and even families are the ‘bad’. In contrast the heroes are sexual liberos – alone by themselves, honest and in full visibility. Sexual honesty, openness and freedom are equated with moral virtuousness and the desire to root out corruption and crime. While Blomkvist is mocked by Lisbeth for wanting procedural justice rather than r

etribution Parks adroitly notes that, like Batman in tank-girl tee-shirts, Lisbeth never actually kills the bad guys. She may rape them with Dongzilla but ‘once she has reduced a victim to total vulnerability, fastening his feet to the floor with a nail gun, for example, she will anonymously contact some rival criminal eager to finish the job.’

The reader is spared their retribution-seeking heroine actually killing nor are they asked to ‘question his or her enjoyment in seeing sexual humiliation inflicted on evil rapists. That pleasure will not be spoiled.‘ Lisbeth is Lara Croft meets Richard Littlejohn in R18 detail. Little wonder the series has sold in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.

Kasparov was born the year Fischer achieved a perfect score at the US Championship (1963), was inspired by his ‘My 60 Memorable Games’ and an avid fan (aged 9) when Fischer beat Spassky to become world champion. With his departure from Chess Kasparov never played Fischer but was always asked comparisons when he took the mantle.

The chess of Spaasky & Fischer’s 1992 rematch was ‘predictably sloppy, although there were a few flashes of the old Bobby brilliance’ and marked by his strange claims (spitting on a US cable warning him of breaching the UN embargo on Yugoslavia, denouncing his ‘blacklist(ing) by world Jewry’. ‘You had to look away, but you could not‘.

Fischer wouldn’t play Kasparov, ostensibly over unpaid soviet bloc royalties on his book, but more likely, per Kasparov, ‘in chess he always saw clearly and was honest with himself. He understood that the chess Olympus was no longer his to conquer’.

Fischer’s death in 2008 – from refusing medical treatment mirrored his life growing up without worthy opponents – ‘he had fought to the end and proven himself to be his most dangerous opponent‘.

Why did Fischer retire? It was not unusual for him to take the first post-Iceland year off but in the second the 3-year World Championship cycle would be afoot. Fischer instead contested the rules for the competition and when no agreement met, he quit. Kasparov asserts the rule changes Fischer demanded showed he was nervous about facing the new breed of players following in his trail – Karpov was ruthless, not gentlemanly like the old generation, and had also crushed Spassky. He notes reaction to his similar assertion in his 2004 book on Fischer (My Great Predecessors Pt. IV (2004)) was hostile and that Brady also discards it.

Kasparov maintains that while Fischer was fearless at the board he was susceptible to crisis of confidence before matches and that his contesting of rules was a mark of this. The changes he requested (a challenger needing to win 10-8, unlimited draws etc) are ‘evidence’ of such and in keeping with the character of a man who could not face defeat.

On his decline and fall from grace – arrest, refuge in Iceland, public perceptions of mental health problems – Kasparov invokes Voltaire:

‘Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and, forget not to be excessively opinionated and obstinate’ That is, purposeful and successful madness can hardly be called mad. After Fisher left chess the dark forces inside him no longer had purpose.’